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Opinion Contributor

President Obama’s real agenda

Obama is not trying to unite the country, the authors write. | AP Photo

Two factors fuel his overconfidence: a visionless, disorganized Republican Party, and a docile, shamelessly partisan media.

Republicans lack an agenda and a message. Even when their instincts are correct, they can’t seem to communicate with the American people. With no competing narrative, they continue to take a drubbing in the court of public opinion as “the party of the rich.”

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The media, meanwhile, remain determined to protect the president. Only when they found out, belatedly, that Obama played golf with Tiger Woods did they become angry with the White House for not letting them in on the photo op. They are silent about Obama’s failure to address the nation’s fiscal challenges, his stonewalling on Benghazi, or the refusal of his unqualified Defense nominee to release his records. But a secret golf game with Tiger Woods — that’s beyond the pale.

With weak opposition and a compliant media, the only place the president might hear criticism is from within his own party — but that’s not happening, either. As lifelong Democrats, we can remember a time when the Senate had a Sam Nunn and a Daniel Patrick Moynihan on one side, and on the other, a Bob Dole — men who put country first, party second. Today, partisanship and party discipline are practically absolute.

Obama has brought partisanship to a new low by creating a full-time political advocacy organization — Organizing for Action — funded by secret contributions from corporate elites. OFA’s founding is historically unprecedented. No president has ever affiliated himself with a national organization other than reelection campaigns. Obama has taken the Saul Alinsky organizing vision to a national level.

In earlier columns, we’ve described Obama as the most polarizing president in American history, but even we never imagined that he would be this divisive.

The president’s overconfidence — by now a well-known character flaw — may yet backfire on him. The country is struggling and scared; businesses feel deep uncertainty about making investments in this climate. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the sequester could stifle economic growth and slow down the stock market.

The risk to Obama would be even greater if he had a strong opposition. Still, the president faces a downside not reflected in current polling numbers. Presidents ultimately take the blame when things go wrong. In August 2011, Obama paid the most serious political price from the debt-ceiling debacle that led to the first-ever credit downgrade in U.S. history. It was his administration’s low point, and it led to the sequester scenario that we now face.

Obama and the Democrats may be the short-term victors of the sequester drama, however it ends. But the long-term outcome is less certain. What is certain is that the American people are hurting and losing faith in the system, and for good reason. For all of the Republican missteps and myopia, the problem starts at the top, with a president determined to pursue a partisan agenda — the country be damned.

Douglas E. Schoen is a former pollster for Bill Clinton and Patrick H. Caddell is a former pollster for President Jimmy Carter.